


Vestiges

by azurefishnets



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen, complicated fatherly feelings, so idk just take this weird little thing and go, this fic doesn't actually match any chocobox prompts, what price glory when you're dead to begin with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: Being forgotten would be better than having to face her scorn. What price sacrifice if all it gains is nothing?





	Vestiges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingsyouburn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsyouburn/gifts).



The dead cannot feel, so they say, although perhaps they, too, dreamed, just as the Fayth and the living had done since time immemorial. The Farplane negated all else, suffering and pleasure alike diffused to murky homogeneity. The dead roved, shattered and torn to Pyrrhic shreds, victory or defeat all the same by the dim glow of what remained, flitting over icy water and rock. The Farplane waited for each and all, Sins of the world and sins of the flesh abated by what peace the dead may find in eternal rest.

Whatever was left of those who had died in service to Spira, be they memories or illusions, passing pareidolia in the flicker of pyreflies or truly projections of the dead, it had been a comfort to generations of Spirans. It was an easy step to hope that those loved ones who had gone before derived some comfort from a visit, and even easier to convince oneself that there was thought there, behind those still faces and lambent seemings.

Braska floated in enduring repose, lost in the waking dreams of faith and Fayth mingled. Occasionally his seeming, a mere projection of his self, was manifested on the Farplane. A summoner in need of inspiration or hope, it usually was. They might stand there for minutes or hours. He could almost feel their dreams for peace, dimly, like the faintest warmth from an ember about to burn out. When, inevitably, those summoners joined him in death, he could almost feel regret for one more dream extinguished.

Occasionally in his peregrinations through the fields of that farthest plane, he might find the fading mental signature that signified his wife and they might mingle for a time, a spiritual connection no longer urgent in its remembrance of an earthly link but comforting in the knowledge that they were both still there, still remembered. Others he had known, likewise, occasionally came to his attention. Otherwise, he waited. His Guardians were still out there, somewhere. Jecht and Auron—he could remember them even when almost all else faded. They were the closest thing Braska had to purpose, in this aimless void. Bold, angry, Jecht, always quick to anger. Auron, calm, steady. His sword and shield, he’d once joked.

One other awaited as well, but Braska would be pleased for her to stay well away from the realms he inhabited for many years yet. Nevertheless, no dreams burned as bright in the otherworldly perception that served as his senses as those of the young lady Summoner that roved Spira in search of Calm. Braska could feel her visit to the Farplane with a clarity that no other visiting Summoner had ever provoked in him. The semblance of himself could not move, could not speak, but Braska was there, flickering behind the eyes of the projection his daughter had pulled from the twisting memories of the Farplane. He could sense no such clear presence from his wife. This was a calling for him alone.

Yuna’s dreams burned bright, reflecting from the ground and the sky and even the pyreflies themselves, bathing the world of the dead in a warmth bright and vital as fever. What she felt, what she planned, was more than a dream, it was an obsession, a will stronger than iron. In the reflection of her radiance, Braska could remember emotion. He could remember the things he’d wanted for his beautiful, awkward, talented, solitary daughter. Being a Summoner had not been on the list. He’d wanted her to live a happy life, far from conflict, far from the eternal call to penitence. He’d wanted to save Spira, of course, wanted to keep what had happened to his wife from happening to other innocents, but most of all, he’d wanted to save her.

In the fire of Yuna’s waking dreams, Braska could still want. He wanted to beg her to stay away, to plead for her forgiveness. He had tried to atone for the world’s Sin when he needed to make penance for his own. He could see nothing but determination and mute appeal in her mismatched blue and green eyes, a woman grown searching for her father’s approval. No condemnation, no raging scorn, could remind him of his dual failure and success so sharply.

He had failed to bring the Eternal Calm. He had quelled one Sin and unleashed another, turning sword to armor in some twisted rite he had been unable to stop or change. In what plane, this or any other, did he have the right to grant Yuna approval for anything? She was the world’s hope and had been Braska’s last regret. He could not feel that now, nor rage or despair or any other emotion worthy of his brilliant, bold daughter, but he could remember, a dream of his own within his placid surface-seeming.

In the timeless interlude that followed Yuna’s visit, as Braska resumed his aimless drift, the memory of her stayed, floating alongside and with him. In that final resplendence of all sins expiated and the gods’ revenge defeated by human ingenuity, Sin Calmed at last and sky and ground and the very air luminous with all the pent-up joy and wonder the faithful had been waiting to release for a thousand years, still, Braska saw Yuna alone amidst that glory. Yuna, with her opalescent, unattainable dreams, had managed to do what no one in a thousand years had, but her stricken face and outstretched hand as she lost yet more beloved souls to Sin, even amid the grand explosion of joy, tormented him even as he welcomed his erstwhile sword and shield and the one that had sacrificed everything for her triumph. It was a cruel irony, that a ghost should be haunted by the living.

The Fayth had gone to ground; only cold stone, dreaming what dreams may be found in the crystalline matrices of earth’s scars, remained. The Farplane, too, remained, the living dreams of Spirans alone maintaining the tenuous connection with their beloved dead, who still drifted, still served as a shimmering reminder of the sorrow of a thousand years’ making. Braska, however, no longer had the luxury of that peace.  His Calm had been destroyed when the Eternal Calm began. It was a reawakening of all the emotions that should have been long put to rest.

He was and ever had been proud, beyond measure, of his impossible daughter, and yet he had failed so unutterably to be worthy of her he could hardly bear to contemplate it. All he had ever wanted for her was peace, but he had been unable to be the one to gift it to her. Now she had brought respite to all and exposed the rot at the heart of everything he had ever worked for. The world he had died to create for her was a mere seeming, as flimsy and intangible as the images on the Farplane.

Time passed and Yuna did not appear before him again, did not call him from the depths of the Farplane to confront her. Braska almost allowed himself to forget and resume his long slow drift into unmemorability. He was dimly pleased to accept this as his final fate. Let his efforts and those before him fade with even the memory of Sin. Let Yuna’s Calm be the only memory people had or needed of the Summoners of Spira. Braska, Yocun, Ohalland, Gandof—let the litany of their names be forgotten, and let that first High Summoner, she of immortal beauty and eternal treachery, be forgotten too. Yuna, her namesake, could be that revenant’s only and most lasting legacy.  
  
As Spira’s last High Summoner spoke out, denouncing the old ways and announcing a new life, Spirans gathered and listened, and dared to dream of a world without Sin. Her words, halting though they were, prophesied simple joys and a new path for Spirans everywhere, but they also held a warning. Forget the past and it repeats. The cycle would and could start again if Spirans forgot the lessons she and the other High Summoners had learned and taught in blood. The faithful heard, and their dreams changed and built accordingly, shaking the Farplane with every revelation.

Through their dreams, Braska heard the words of his salvation as well. His sacrifice, sword and shield and all, had paved a path for Yuna. He had followed the old ways and they had brought he and his Guardians to destruction, but Yuna had taken that pain and forged it into something stronger than armor. His legacy was not worthless. His legacy was the daughter he had raised to believe in something more than following the easy path. His legacy, and that of the other High Summoners and their Guardians, was the kind of soul-deep determination that had brought Auron back from the dead, that had caused Jecht to hold onto sanity long enough to bring his son and Braska’s daughter together, that had caused that same son to willingly sacrifice himself for Yuna’s Calm.

Braska and his wife, Jecht and Auron, Yuna and her Guardians—all of them would eventually go to the Farplane, and when they were forgotten, their names no longer spoken, would disappear. If something awaited after that, it was beyond the powers of the dead to know. Braska was, at last, content to know that he too would fade in due time. His name would be gone from the minds of the people of Spira, and that was all he could ask. His dream, however, would never fade. It had been passed to Yuna, and she had gifted it to the world. It would shine bright for as long as there were Spirans to dream it, never forgotten.

Braska’s story was over; the dream had just begun. It was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I don't know, I wrote this for @wingsyouburn's Braska & Yuna prompt but it didn't really fit it or anyone else's prompt so now it's just here. Seems a waste not to post it so I guess here it is, a second gift.


End file.
